Page 2 of Willow in the Wind

It wasn’t clear where they’d gotten it. The grocery store? The post office? They’d worn masks, just as they were supposed to. They’d washed their hands. But then, one afternoon, they were both knocked out with coughs rattling their lungs and rasping at their throats.

The kids were spared, thankfully. Chloe was twelve, and Logan was fourteen, and they’d sent them to stay with family until Stella and Matt were healthy again.

It had been the first time Matt and Stella were alone at home—just the two of them—in what felt like years. Matt had cooked them buckets of soup, and they’d watched old movies, someof which they’d loved when they were first dating—Good Will Hunting, The Butterfly Effect,andReality Bites.Sometimes Stella felt tricked into thinking she was twenty-four again. They laughed a lot during those ten days.

Was it Stella who asked it? Or Matt? She couldn’t remember. But they’d started talking about the future.

“Where do you see yourself in ten years? Twenty?”

It was obvious to both of them they didn’t see one another in the picture anymore. Not in a romantic way, anyway.

Stella had waited until she went upstairs to burst into tears. But she’d rebounded quickly. By the time they were cleared of COVID-19 and the kids were home, they had a plan. They’d called Alan Johnson.

They were modern people. They weren’t in love anymore. They were going to get divorced!

There hadn’t been a scandal.

No lying. No cheating. No disrespect.

Now, Stella was thirty-nine, and Matt was forty-one, and they were finishing their ice cream cones and preparing to move forward with their lives apart.

They got up from the bench, wiped their hands on napkins, and hugged. Stella laughed nervously. Matt had tears in his eyes.

“I’ll pick up the kids on Thursday,” he said although they both had the schedule down pat by now. They’d been doing it since May.

“And I’ll take Chloe to piano Friday afternoon while Logan’s at soccer,” Stella affirmed.

They walked down the sidewalk until they found Matt’s car, but then he insisted on walking Stella to hers first. He wanted to be a gentleman till the very end. He winked before she got in and said, “Drive safe.” After that, he strode back down the sidewalk and disappeared around the corner.

Stella took a jagged breath and gripped the steering wheel as her heart raced. But all the way home, she sang the songs on the radio at the top of her lungs. She wasn’t worried about a thing.

Chapter Two

Summer 2020

At the same time Matt and Stella signed the divorce papers, James Atkinson was on the tip of the dock outside his rental house in the Florida Keys, staring down at a wet rope. A dull ache thrummed behind his eyes, and the sweltering sun cast sweat beads down his neck and back. He muttered angrily under his breath.

The rope had once secured his pride and joy sailboat—Stella—to the side of that very dock. The sailboat was gone.

But the sailboat wasn’t the only thing missing from James’s little house that day.

James tugged his cell from his pocket and called his daughter, Taylor. But after just two rings, the call cut out and sent a horrible alarm through his ear. He winced and pulled the phone away from his face. Cell service wasn’t so great on the island. Somehow, it had worsened since the pandemic, but James couldn’t say why. There was a sensation that everything about the world was upside down. That it could never be put to right again.

James glanced at his small beach house, his hands resting on his hips as he took in the view of the property he’d retreated to when things had spiraled in London back in mid-March. Manhattan hadn’t been an option either. With the pandemic, he craved open space, salty ocean air, and a sense of freedom. So he’d found an island in the Keys—Tavernier—with a tiny population of just two thousand and caught the next flight out. The sailboat he had stored in Miami made the trip down to the Keys easy. London felt like a distant nightmare he’d finally escaped.

James stomped back down the dock. The boards wiggled and whacked together beneath his feet. Once inside, he filled a glass with water and tried to call Taylor again. When was the last time he’d seen her? This morning, maybe? Hadn’t she said she was going for a bike ride? But James had been in his office, working on an article for an online music magazine that was due at the end of the week. The article required intensive listening to a brand-new album from a nearly forgotten British rocker in the midst of a comeback. James had started the album thinking he would pan it but emerged from his office with tears in his eyes. The rocker had gone out of his way to make something sensational. James hoped people would read his review and take heart.Music isn’t dead. There’s still so much left to discover.

But James couldn’t think about the album any longer. He had to track down Taylor and figure out what happened to his boat.

James’s little rental had two bedrooms, one for him and one for Taylor, his office, a living room with floor-to-ceiling windows that looked out at the turquoise water (and usually his sailboat), and a kitchen with a stove that only liked to work part-time. It had been the perfect bachelor pad until Taylor’s mother had called him up in mid-May and begged him to take her in.“Manhattan is insane right now,” Nancy had said. “I don’t want her here.”

James understood that. He was frightened, too. But when he suggested Nancy come to the Florida Keys with Taylor—to save herself from Manhattan—Nancy had said she’d made alternate plans. He knew there was a man in her life. Most likely, bringing her daughter along would cramp her style.

James pressed his hands against the cool of the counter and considered what to do. He had no food in the fridge and no beer in sight for later. His plan had been to sail to the opposite side of the island to do some grocery shopping, maybe grab a beer at the pub, and then sail back to cook for him and Taylor. The town was six miles away, and he didn’t have a car right now.

James would have to figure something else out. He always did.

James put on a clean T-shirt and a pair of shorts, grabbed his wallet, and struck out the door that faced the road. Nobody on the island ever locked their doors, and he’d gotten out of the habit of it, too—something he’d have to return to do if he ever moved back to London or Manhattan.How could I ever leave this?he asked himself of Florida, then laughed. He was out of his mind with the heat. He needed to go swimming.

---